


Killing Spree

by Ruen



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 08:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14637570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruen/pseuds/Ruen
Summary: Axton gets shot. Zer0 responds accordingly.





	Killing Spree

Axton is seriously starting to reconsider his decision to become a vault hunter. He loves it, don’t get him wrong, but it _hurts_ when you get shot.

Axton is currently lying behind a sheet of metal, the resounding crack of gunfire echoing around him as he clutches at the bullet wound in his thigh. The blood is seeping from between his fingers no matter how hard he presses, and he distantly thinks that that can’t be a good sign. The pain is excruciating, as if his entire leg is on fire, the pain radiating throughout his whole body. It only becomes worse as he grits his teeth so hard that his jaw aches from the force of it.

Axton tries to pay attention to what is happening around him, tries to take note of where his teammates are, if they’re all still alive. But his vision is starting to get blurry and all he can see are vague shapes and colors, flashes of light as gunshots echo in his ears. He looks back down at his leg, transfixed by how red the blood is, barely registering that that blood is _his_ , that he’s going to die soon if he keeps bleeding like this, his entire pant leg soaked and sitting in a puddle of his own blood. It looks almost black in the grey, overcast light, soaking rapidly into the dusty ground.

He vaguely registers a dark shape moving towards him, but can’t find the energy to focus his eyes or lift his head. He just continues to stare vacantly at his leg, not reacting when suddenly that dark shape is right in front of him, roughly shaking his shoulders. Axton hears a voice, but it’s muffled and sounds as if it is coming from somewhere very far away. But that voice sounds _familiar_ and suddenly he desperately wants to be able to find the energy to really listen, to hear whatever this person is saying. But no matter how hard he tries, his ears refuse to work.

Suddenly a hand grasps his chin, grip unyielding and harsh, and Axton thinks he might have let out a whimper of pain, but he’s not sure. The hand yanks his head up, causing his neck to protest sharply from the motion. His vision blacks out for a second from the new rush of pain, but his eyes eventually clear and he can actually focus enough to make out what is in front of him.

A wobbly grin spreads across his face as he recognizes Zer0’s helmet. Axton distantly realizes that his mouth tastes of iron and that the blood on his teeth must make quite a gruesome sight, but he doesn’t really care. He instead plants an unsteady hand on Zer0’s shoulder and slurs, “Zer0! Hey man, you’re still alive!” He lifts his hand to pat where Zer0’s cheek would be, but misses and giggles to himself at the smear of blood he leaves on Zer0’s faceplate. A frowny face flashes across Zer0’s helmet and Axton wants to fix that, deciding he’ll draw a smiley face on the helmet instead. But his vision is growing dark again and he’s getting sleepy, so he decides he’ll have to do it later and just take a nap now. He closes his eyes.

Zer0 shakes Axton’s chin, grip tightening even further, and says something that Axton can’t make out. Axton forces his eyes open and giggles again, saying, “Zer0, I can’t understand you. You know you’re not speaking English, right?” Zer0’s posture tenses at that, and Axton wonders what he said wrong, opening his mouth to ask, but then Zer0 is pulling out a sizeable injection needle from a pouch at their side. It glows a hazy red.

Axton has no time to respond as Zer0 has already uncapped the health shot and injected it into his leg. He doesn’t even feel it as the needle plunges into the muscle of his thigh. Zer0 then hastily wraps Axton’s wound in gauze, pulling the wrappings uncomfortably tight. Axton watches Zer0’s hands the entire time, transfixed by their slender fingers, but then Zer0 is suddenly gone, vanished into thin air. Axton gazes around himself, bewildered, but sees no trace of the assassin.

He flops onto his back, giving up on figuring out where Zer0 went, and stares blankly at the sky for a long moment. But as the drugs rush through his system and start to take effect, his mind clears a bit and he can actually think coherently. He lurches into a sitting position, vision spinning rapidly at the sudden movement, and gasps as he realizes that Zer0 just gave him the last health pack and that, last time he checked, there were still a ton of bandits trying to blast their brains out.

Axton gathers enough energy to lift himself up a bit and peeks out from behind his sheet of metal. He’s met with the sight of Zer0 promptly decapitating the nearest bandit with their sword. It’s messy, blood spattering everywhere as the head hits the ground and rolls, and it’s unlike Zer0. Zer0 doesn’t do messy.

Axton just watches, wide eyed, as Zer0 kills every last bandit in the vicinity. He vaguely notes that Maya and Salvador have stopped fighting the bandits, just watching Zer0 like Axton is, their expressions just as shocked as Axton imagines his own must be.

Zer0 is fighting with deadly focus, every movement perfectly controlled as they slice a bandit’s arm off. It hits the ground heavily and the bandit starts to scream, but the sound is brutally cut off as Zer0 stabs him through the throat. Then Zer0 is moving to their next victim, never once pausing in their attack.

Axton is transfixed by the way Zer0 moves, is surprised every time he watches Zer0 fight by just how graceful the assassin is. Axton has lived almost his entire life fighting, and he has long since come to the difficult realization that battle is not beautiful or full of glory. It is full of blood and screams and shit and piss and that for every adrenaline high there is a subsequent low of pain. But sometimes, watching Zer0 fight, Axton thinks that maybe there’s some beauty in battle after all. It’s not a gentle beauty, for sure, but something can be said for the way Zer0 moves, the way they’re sharp and deadly and utterly untouchable.

But Axton’s attention is soon drawn back to the way something is slightly off. Zer0 isn’t killing the bandits cleanly. They’re knocking them down, leaving them to die slowly from horrific wounds. It’s brutal, even for Zer0, and it’s kind of terrifying. It’s also kind of hot, but that might be the blood loss talking.

And then just as suddenly as it started, it’s over. The battlefield has fallen into an unnatural hush and every enemy lays dead or dying on the hard, rocky ground. Zer0 stands in the middle of it all, chest moving up and down with deep, ragged breaths. Axton isn’t sure if he’s _ever_ seen Zer0 out of breath before. Actually, he hadn’t even been sure if Zer0 needed to breathe in the first place.

Then Zer0 is walking up to him, covered in blood, and Axton comes to the conclusion that Zer0 is very definitely terrifying. He suppresses the urge to flinch back as Zer0 crouches in front of him. He’s not sure if he does a good job. But then Zer0 is reaching for him and without warning Axton finds himself being hoisted into the air. It fucking hurts.

“Jesus fucking shit! Fucking asshole!” He tries to punch Zer0 in the shoulder, but his arm refuses to cooperate and his vision is starting to swim at the edges again. He thinks the drugs might be wearing off and he vaguely realizes that he should probably be more worried than he is about that fact.

Instead he focuses on the fact that Zer0 is carrying him bridal style and that he totally does not need Zer0’s help. At all.

“Hey, asshole,” Axton manages to speak up, “Let me go.” It comes out far weaker than he means it to. Zer0 doesn’t respond.

“I s’d lemme go,” Axton mumbles. His tongue feels like lead in his mouth.

Zer0 finally turns their head to look down at Axton, the smooth surface of their helmet impassive. When they speak, their voice is just as flat as always. “You’re forgetting the/ fact that you got shot in the/ leg. You can not walk.”

Axton huffs out an indignant, “M’ fine.” He can’t feel his fingers. He’s silent for a moment, thinking, the process feeling like slogging through mud. He then slurs out, “I’ve had worse.”

“You’ve had worse, you say?/ Anything worse than this and/ you would be quite dead.”

Axton wants to tell Zer0 about the time his entire arm nearly got blown off, but can’t seem to find the breath to do so. It’s frustrating, so instead he buries his face in the curve of Zer0’s neck. Zer0’s suit smells like leather and gunpowder and blood. It’s strangely comforting.

He thinks Zer0 says something else, the visor of their helmet flashing red, but Axton misses it as he fades out of consciousness.

 

¤¤¤

 

Axton comes to and it feels as if he is trying to drag himself out of quicksand. His body feels heavy and there is a warm weight encasing him. It’s constricting and he feels his heart rate quicken at the thought of all the horrible situations he could find himself in once he manages to get his eyes open. Which he finally does, but his eyes are crusty and it feels disgusting and everything is still blurry for a long moment. He blinks a few times and finds himself staring up at a grungy ceiling, the paint peeling away in long strips.

He lifts his head slightly and looks down at his chest to see that a tattered blanket has been thrown over him. That at least suggests that wherever he is, any people nearby probably don’t want him dead. If they took the time to try to keep him from freezing to death, he might even be safe for a while.

Axton then looks to his side and nearly jumps out of his skin when he finds Zer0 sitting next to him, back propped up against a wall. But Axton is still kind of out of it and all his body manages to do in response is twitch slightly at the shock. His hand spasms and it feels strange, because something is wrapped around it, preventing it from moving fully. Axton glances down, thinking maybe his hand got stuck in the blanket or something, and then just stares.

Zer0 is holding his hand. Zer0. Holding his hand. It’s oddly sweet and entirely unexpected, but Axton isn’t complaining. It’s nice, actually. Zer0’s hand is warm through the leather of their glove.

Zer0 must notice that Axton is conscious, because they start to pull their hand away. Axton isn’t having any of that and tightens his grip reflexively. Zer0 stills and it’s odd how different Zer0’s hands are, yet they don't feel strange held in Axton's own. Which reminds Axton that, hey, Zer0 only has four fingers and wow, why has he not thought about that more? He kind of wants to take the opportunity to examine the hand that Zer0 currently has trapped in Axton’s own, but when he tries to drag Zer0’s hand closer to his face his arm doesn’t cooperate and just lays there, limp and unresponsive.

Axton is then unhelpfully reminded that his entire body is one giant ache when a sharp wave of pain courses through his leg. He grimaces and tries to sit up, but only manages to shift a little to the side. Axton is starting to get genuinely frustrated with his body’s lack of strength when suddenly a strong arm wraps itself behind his shoulder blades and helps lift him up into a sitting position. The arm is attached to Zer0 and the warmth of Zer0’s arm is searing a line into Axton’s back and suddenly the memory of Zer0 killing all those bandits and carrying Axton to safety comes rushing back into Axton’s mind.

And Axton must be shot full of more pain meds than he realized, because the next thing he does is lean up and press a quick kiss to the side of Zer0's faceplate in thanks for saving him.

The movement takes more out of Axton than he expected, because suddenly darkness is creeping in at the edges of his vision and his mind is going hazy. The last thing he sees before he loses consciousness is the red glow of a blush flashing across Zer0’s faceplate.

 

¤¤¤

 

Axton wakes up a few hours later and almost has a heart attack. Because, in his post-almost-dying delirium, he had pretty much just kissed the untouchable Zer0.

Oh, fuck, Zer0 is going to kill him. (He’s kind of looking forward to it).


End file.
